“’Ah, wilt thou thus, for his loved sake,
     All manner of hardships dare to know?’
     The fair one smiled whenas he spake,
     And promptly answered, ‘No, sir; no,’”

“Cray,” said John Mortimer, observing the boy’s wan appearance, “how could you think of sitting up so late?”

“Why, the thupper wath on purpoth for him,” exclaimed Johnnie.  “We gave it in hith honour, ath a mark of thympathy.”

“Because he was burnt out,” said Gladys.  “Papa, did you know? his tutor’s house was burnt down, and the boys had to escape in the night.”

“But it wath a great lark,” observed Johnnie, “and he knowth he thought tho.”

“Yes,” said Crayshaw, folding his hands with farcical mock meekness, “but I saved hardly anything—­nothing whatever, in fact, but my Yankee accent, and that only by taking it between my teeth.”

“There was not enough of it to be worth saving, my dear boy,” said Brandon.

Crayshaw’s face for once assumed a genuine expression, one of alarm.  He was distinguished at school for the splendid Yankee dialect he could put on, as Johnnie was for his mastery of a powerful Devonshire lingo; but if scarcely a hint of his birthplace remained in his daily speech, and he had not noticed any change, there was surely danger lest this interesting accomplishment should be declining also.

“I am always imitating the talk I hear in the cottages,” he remarked; “I may have lost it so.”

“Perhaps, as Cray goes to so many places, it may get scattered about,” said little Bertram; but he was speedily checked by Johnnie, who observed with severity that they didn’t want any “thrimp thauth.”

“He mutht thimmer,” said Johnnie, “thath what he mutht do.  He mutht be thrown into an iron pot, with a gallon of therry cobbler, and a pumpkin pie, and thome baked beanth, and a copy of the Biglow Paperth, and a handful of thalt, and they mutht all thimmer together till he geth properly flavoured again.”

“Wouldn’t it be safer if he was only dipped in?” asked the same “shrimp” who had spoken before.

As this was the second time he had taken this awful liberty, he would probably have been dismissed the assembly but for the presence of his father.  As it was, Johnnie and Crayshaw both looked at him, not fiercely but steadily, whereupon the little fellow with deep blushes slid gently from his chair under the table.

A few days after this midnight repast, Emily, knowing that John Mortimer was away a good deal, and having a perfectly gratuitous notion that his children must be dull in consequence, got Valentine to drive her over one morning to invite them to spend a day at Brandon’s house.

A great noise of shouting, drumming on battledores, and blowing through discordant horns, let them know, as they came up the lane, that the community was in a state of high activity; and when they reached the garden gate they were just in time to see the whole family vanish round a corner, running at full speed after a donkey on which Johnnie was riding.